Sunday, February 26

5 Births, 3 Deaths...

While going out to do my morning chores, I noticed that Alpine was acting funny and I knew that she was going into labor. Since she's one of the older gals I thought she'd just pop them right out so the boys and I stuck around to watch the excitement. After about an hour of watching her scratch the ground, grunt, and fart, we headed back to the house for nap time.


Once The Babe was asleep I snuck back down to the corrals and found Alpine with 2 babies out! Totally excited but bummed at the same time. Baby #1 didn't make it and was dead on arrival. I buried her in the little goat cemetery. Not my favorite thing to do...


When I went back to check on the mama & baby she had already squeezed out another baby! I'm please to introduce to you:

Peter


Wendy


These two are cuter than I had expected because their mama is probably the ugliest goat I have. Alpine has been a good mama to them thus far and is very protective of them.

The next morning when I went out for chores then 800 was missing. Being the last one pregnant I had an idea of what she was up to. Behind one of the panels she was doing the same as Alpine did the day before: scratches, grunting, farting. I threw some extra hay over for her and took off.


When I came back out an hour or so later she had birthed two babies! Basil & Olivia were cuddled up together and were the fattest babies we've had thus far.

Basil


Are you wondering where the picture of Olivia is? Well, she didn't make it. She did really great the first day - up walking and nursing just fine. That night Hurricane got it's freak snow storm and poor Olivia just got too cold. When I went to do chores I noticed that something was a muck. She wouldn't stand up and just bellered on-and-on. I brought her a bottle and tried to get her to eat but she was too far gone. She died in my arms.

To top the day off, that morning my brother Austin informed me that my goat herd was down from 23 to 22. Poor little Itchy also got too cold in the snow and was dead.

The ground was too frozen to bury these two so they will become coyote food. I feel awful about it but I guess they need to eat too.

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